News Release

Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon

image: 

Gene expression alterations in the glutamatergic, GABAergic, and cholinergic pathways of cetaceans may help to inhibit sleep and promote wakefulness.

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Credit: Yin et al., 2025, PLOS Genetics, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Whales and dolphins sleep by turning off one half of their brains at a time; scientists discover more about the genes and pathways that enable this phenomenon. 

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Article URL: https://plos.io/4c9g5gm

Article Title: Evolution of canonical circadian clock genes underlies unique sleep strategies of marine mammals for secondary aquatic adaptation

Author Countries: China

Funding: This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development (R&D) Program of China (grant no. 2022YFF1301600) to G.Y. & S.X., the Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 32030011) to G.Y., the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 32070409, 32270453, 31772448, 32270442, and 32200348), the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2019YFA0802400) to H. W, the National Key Program of Research and Development the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), the Qinglan Project of Jiangsu Province to S.X.. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.


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